Arbeitsbereich: Sociology

Dr. Fabian Anicker is a research associate in the project “Meinungsmonitor Künstliche Intelligenz” [MeMo:KI] at the HHU-Düsseldorf since 2022 and deputy speaker of the DGS section sociological theory. Prior to that, he served as editor of the German journal “Zeitschrift für Theoretische Soziologie” at the University of Münster from 2015 to 2022. In 2011, he earned a master’s degree in Global and International Sociology at the University of Edinburgh, having previously studied social sciences in Düsseldorf (2007 to 2010). In 2019, he received his PhD from HHU-Düsseldorf with a thesis on communicative rationality and deliberative democracy from a sociological perspective.

His research interests are political sociology, especially public sphere and democratic theory, and sociology of technology, especially artificial intelligence. He also deals with general issues of sociological theory such as theory formation and theory comparison.

Christian Koß is a research associate at the Chair of Communication and Media Studies I at HHU-Düsseldorf. He is currently coordinating the third-party funded project ‘Discourse Data for Policy’ together with colleagues from the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. Before joining the HHU-Düsseldorf, he worked at the University of Stuttgart in the third-party funded project ‘ABD – Aufbruch, Abbruch oder Durchbruch? Factors influencing scientific career paths in the natural and social sciences’ and did research on scientific career paths. He studied sociology (B.A.) and social research (M.A.) at the University of Bremen. For his PhD Christian Koß works in the field of Computational Social Science and explores artificial intelligence methods for the analysis of political discourses and dynamics.

His research focuses on network analysis and machine learning.

Bettina Ülpenich has been working as a research assistant at the Chair of Sociology I at HHU-Düsseldorf since 2017. In addition, she has been a research associate at the Chair of Sociology II since 2021. She studied economics & politics, design technology (teaching degree) and sociology (M.A.) at the Bergische Universität Wuppertal. Her dissertation focused on the construction of categorical belonging using the example of the in-custody care of unaccompanied minor refugees.

Her research interests include the construction of categorical order, the sociology of gender, and new developments in higher education.

Dr. Johannes Krause has been a member of staff at the Chair of Sociology II at HHU-Düsseldorf since 2011. He studied social sciences at the University of Cologne and completed a part-time Master of Business Administration in 2019.

His research interests are physical attractiveness research and the (un)fair determinants of educational trajectories.

Jun.-Prof. Dr. Ulf Tranow has been Junior Professor of Sociology at HHU-Düsseldorf since January 2013. His research interests include sociological theories of action, social mechanisms of normative integration, and collective good problems and their solutions.

In the context of DIID, he is interested in the social, societal, and institutional conditions for the formation of political trust in conflictual online deliberation processes.

Prof. Dr. Michael Baurmann is Senior Professor of Sociology at the HHU-Düsseldorf. Previously, he held a chair in sociology in Düsseldorf since 1997. His research areas are general sociology, theories of social cooperation and trust, and social epistemology.

At DIID, he is interested in developing innovative concepts for interactive, dialogue-based online participation processes.